Deity Deng used in Chinese power play

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The late Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping loathed the cult of personality, but on the 100th anniversary of his birth yesterday Communist Party leaders almost deified the diminutive reformer to underscore their legitimacy.

A bronze statue of the man whose policies have made many Chinese rich has been unveiled, memorial gold watches handed out, new symphonies performed and countless books published.

The propaganda furore is not only to remember the guerilla fighter and bridge aficionado who died in 1997 aged 92 after freeing China from the shackles of communist central planning of the economy and rehabilitating millions purged in the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

The party chief, President Hu Jintao, and other leaders are eager to be seen as pro-reform in the Deng mould. Crucially, leaders are playing on their links with the chain-smoking, hard-drinking Mr Deng to gain the upper hand in a simmering political rivalry between Mr Hu and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, who remains military chief.

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Mr Hu and his peers in the powerful politburo standing committee flocked to a centennial ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Mr Hu, not Mr Jiang, had the chance to make a speech.

His eulogy pointedly lauded Mr Deng for abolishing the practice of party leaders clinging to power until death, echoing comments by Mr Deng's daughter who described Mr Deng's retirement as one of his greatest contributions to Chinese politics. "He earnestly practised what he advocated and set a good example for others," Mr Hu said of Mr Deng's retirement.

Analysts saw that as a hint to Mr Jiang, 77, to follow in Mr Deng's footsteps and retire at a party plenum next month from his last remaining post, thus completing the succession to Mr Hu, 61.

Mr Deng stepped down from the politburo standing committee in 1987 and kept the top military job for two more years. The only post he held at death was head of the China Bridge Association.

Influential party elders have used the anniversary to emphasise the urgency of one great endeavour that Mr Deng never embraced: overhauling the one-party political system.

In party political journals and interviews as the Deng centenary has neared, several retired leaders made unusually direct pleas to allow more media freedom and to introduce at least a measure of democracy, although all described their proposals as a way of improving rather than replacing Communist Party rule.

China's retired elders are often given latitude to explore delicate topics that incumbent leaders shy away from. But these comments by former leaders appear to reflect mounting internal pressure for Mr Hu to put forward at least modest proposals for fighting corruption, introducing greater accountability, and reducing censorship.

Zhou Ruijin, a former editor of People's Daily, the Communist Party newspaper, wrote in The Bund, a Shanghai weekly: "Compared to economic reform, our political system lags far behind.

"Now the calls for political reform from every quarter of society are very loud," he wrote, adding that the country needed a new "intellectual emancipation" that should start with remaking the ruling party".